AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“That’s better,” Mark says, talking almost to himself. “Let’s turn you over. I want to see your face.”
He flips me onto my back, heedless of my dislocated shoulder, and I have to bite down again to keep from screaming. I force myself to lie still and compliant, eyes half closed, as he pushes my hair away from my face. I don’t move as his hands skim down my chest, even though it takes everything I have not to fight him. I remind myself that n
ow, maybe more than ever before in my life, I need to think, not just act. He leans over me, but still I wait. I will only have one chance.
“Hey,” he says, “are you in shock or something? Wake up.” He slaps my face and I let my head loll on my neck. “Hey,” he repeats, leaning closer, his blue eyes only inches from mine. I bring my arm up fast, slam the rock into the side of his head as hard as I can. It doesn’t knock him out, like I’d hoped, but he’s stunned, head hanging down as he sways on all fours. I use my good arm, rock still clutched in my hand, to push myself up to sitting and hit him again, this time on the back of the head. His hands go out from under him and he falls across my legs. I kick him off, making a high-pitched keening sound in the back of my throat. He’s still conscious, and he tries to grab my foot as I stand, but his fingers slide away. I hit him a third time, on the temple, and his eyes roll back in his head.
I stand over him, panting, somewhere beyond tears. My fingers ache from their tight grip on the rock. I know I should hit him again. Hit him until his head is a bloody, pulpy mess like the lizard I killed yesterday. I bring my arm up, but I can’t make myself bring it down. I can hear Callie inside my head, telling me to Kill him, damn it, what are you waiting for? Even Bishop is whispering in my ear, urging me to end it, make sure that in a future with no guarantees I can at least rest easy that Mark Laird won’t hurt me, or anyone else, ever again. I know that Bishop would not want me to hesitate.
But I can’t do it. Just as I wouldn’t allow Mark Laird to kill me, I don’t want him to be the person who turns me into a killer. I let the rock slide from my numb fingers. Instead, I bend down and rip off his shoes. It takes me twice as long as it should, with only one working arm, and I’m practically sobbing with frustration when I finally pull the second shoe free. I turn and throw them into the river, watch as they drift away on the black current.
It’s almost full dark now, the sun long since disappeared, but we’re blessed with a full moon, and I notice a bag on the ground that I didn’t see earlier. Mark must have dropped it when he spotted me. I pick it up without bothering to look inside and sling it across my body, crying out a little as I work the strap underneath my injured arm. Beside the bag is a round object, glinting in the moonlight. A canteen. I crouch at the edge of the river, one eye on Mark’s still form, and fill it with water.
I need to leave the river, at least for now. It doesn’t offer enough cover. I doubt Mark is the only person out here who will hurt me if he can. And having water will make staying hidden easier. I will have to find somewhere else to get fresh water, but the canteen buys me a little time, at least.
I grab my sweater off the ground and head south without looking back, following the line of the river. I’m searching for someplace to cross where I won’t be swept away. Every step jars my shoulder, but the pain, while ever-present, feels distant, as if I’m watching someone else suffer instead of actually experiencing it myself. Soon enough it’s going to hit me, though, once the shock or adrenaline wears off, and I want to be far away from Mark Laird before that happens.
I’ve been walking for at least fifteen minutes when the river narrows, a series of rocks spread across its width. There’s probably no way to avoid getting wet, but hopefully I can cross without falling in or being swept away. It seems as good a place to try crossing as any. The rocks are slippery and jagged, and my equilibrium is upset by not being able to use my right arm for balance. I lose my footing about halfway across and come inches from somersaulting into the water. Kneeling on a rock, hair hanging in my face, shoulder screaming in protest, ruined fingers still dripping blood, I draw a deep, unsteady breath. My earlier anger, the anger that helped me beat Mark, has dissipated like smoke in the wind. All that’s left is exhaustion. I have never been so bone-weary, so tired all the way to my soul. Do I want to give up or keep going? Live or die? Fight another day or wave the white flag and let the water wash me away? I tell myself this is the last time I will ask this question. Whatever the answer, it will be final.
Come on, Ivy, you can do this. It’s not my own voice urging me on, but Bishop’s. I imagine him next to me, how he would look straight into my eyes and expect me to keep going. How he always believed in me, up until the bitter, ugly end when I forced him to lose his faith. If he were here, he’d help me get to my feet and we’d finish crossing the river together, leaning on each other when slippery rocks threatened. Because with each other, we were always our better, stronger selves.
I know that thinking about Bishop is an indulgence I can ill afford. And in the harsh light of morning I may regret my weakness. But now, with only the indifferent silver moon as witness, I allow myself the comfort of pretending he is beside me, offering his warm hand for me to hold.
I stand up and finish crossing the river.
Chapter Three
The screech of morning birds wakes me, the sun shining into my face. I jerk, disoriented, and my shoulder is suddenly replaced with glass shards and fire. My fingers ache, pulsing underneath their filthy bandage. After crossing the river last night, I walked east until my exhaustion and injuries caught up to me, forcing me to find shelter in a small grove of trees when I couldn’t stop shaking, could barely take another step without falling. But a night spent on the hard ground, my back wedged against a tree trunk, has done nothing to improve my condition. My right arm hangs limp at my side, and the skin of my shoulder feels hot and swollen when I run my fingers over it light as butterfly wings. I don’t bother unwrapping my fingers; I already know what I’ll find.
I sit quietly for a minute, listening for any unnatural sounds around me, but I hear nothing other than the shift of leaves overhead. Mark’s bag is still slung across my body, and I open it, something I never bothered to do last night in the dark. The mere fact that he had a bag and a canteen means that, at the very least, there must be houses around here somewhere. Maybe a whole abandoned town where I can find some type of supplies.
The bag is worn brown canvas, not too big and relatively light. I send up a quick prayer that there’s something to eat inside its depths. The first thing I pull out is a second canteen, empty, and I curse myself for not checking the contents last night. Two full canteens of water would make me feel a lot more confident, but there’s nothing to be done about it now. My fingers close around something wrapped in cloth and I pull it out, unwrap it carefully. I doubt it’s severed fingers, but with Mark Laird you never know. Underneath the cloth there are half a dozen strips of what look like beef jerky. I lift it and sniff. It’s not as well-made as the kind we had in Westfall, but the long, lean winters left all of us familiar with jerky. My mouth fills with saliva at the scent and I tear off a ragged chunk with my teeth. It’s tough and gamy, and still one of the best things I’ve ever tasted. In just a few minutes I’ve already eaten an entire strip, barely taking the time to chew. It hardly touches the gnawing hunger in my belly. But I’m not sure when I’ll find food again, so I force myself to rewrap the rest and set it aside.
The remainder of the bag holds a battered paperback book, one I’ve never read before, some type of mystery with half the pages torn out, probably used for starting fires, and two bruised apples. And at the very bottom of the bag is a broken knife, the blade snapped just above the wooden handle, which is lucky for me. If the knife had been a factor in our fight by the river, the result would’ve been very different.
Mark travels light, which tells me his camp or the place he got his supplies can’t be too far away. I polish one of the apples against my denim-clad thigh and bite into the slightly too-tender flesh. I lean my head back against the tree and allow myself to enjoy the moment, knowing it might be a long time before I have this much to eat again. Have a peaceful morning where I’m not fleeing or fighting for my life.
I need to decide where to go next, and the only thing I’m sure of is that Mark Laird is not alone. He hasn’t been out here long enough to have dried and cured the beef for jerky, if he even knows how. I have no way of knowing if he stole the
jerky or befriended the people who made it. But there are others in close enough proximity that Mark has crossed their paths. I’m not sure whether to be cheered by this thought or terrified.
I have to keep moving. I can’t walk forever; eventually the seasons will change, and by the time the harsh winter snows arrive I want to make sure I have someplace to hole up. To make it through, I’ll need food and a water supply, not to mention warmer clothes. I’m not going to find any of those things by sitting here, waiting for rescue that’s never going to come.
I roll to the side and push myself up with my good arm. The heat from my injured shoulder radiates up into my jaw and down to my fingertips. I need to get my shoulder back into the socket, but I don’t know how to do it by myself. Instead, I fashion a crude sling by tying and looping the arms of my sweater around my neck, slide my arm into the cradle it makes, and sigh with relief when some of the pressure on my shoulder joint eases.
Once I’m up, I continue heading east. Not for any particular reason, just because that’s the opposite direction of where I last saw Mark Laird. I’m hoping to come across a road or path, something I can follow that might lead me to an old town where I can look for supplies. It feels good to have a goal in mind, even a small one, rather than just blundering about aimlessly in this empty landscape.
Bishop would love it out here, I think, as I cross a field of tall grass, brambles catching against my legs every few steps. The quiet, except for insects and the sound of my own breathing. The sun, warm but not yet hot. The clouds, puffs of cotton in a crystal-blue sky. I try to convince myself that this is peaceful, but I’m all too aware of how alone I am. Growing up, I used to wish for a day to myself, one where my father and Callie would leave me to my own thoughts instead of trying to stuff me full of theirs. But now the isolation is smothering. If I discovered I was the last person alive in the world, I would not doubt it.
By the time I come across a road, more weeds than asphalt, I’m limping from blisters on both feet, and my entire right side sparks with pain at each step. I sink down to the ground on the edge of the road. I can’t afford to stop for more than a few minutes. I won’t want to continue if I don’t keep moving forward.
My canteen is only half full, but I take a swallow anyway. I meant to make the water last longer, but the unforgiving sun is making a joke of all my good intentions. I debate whether to eat the last apple or another strip of jerky and finally decide on the apple. It will spoil before the jerky. I make it last as long as I can, sucking on the core until every last bit of moisture is gone, then toss it away.
It’s a risk to go out on the road. I’ll be more easily spotted there than if I keep to the tall grass or trees. But the uneven landscape is quickly proving too difficult for me to navigate with my useless arm and shoulder. Better to take the road, where at least I can keep my footing and avoid a fall. Decisions are easier, I’m finding, when there are no good options to begin with.
Turns out it’s not easy going on the road, either. I have to watch for cracks in the asphalt, ragged chunks that hide behind clumps of creeping green plants. But it’s still less challenging than navigating the tall grass. The sun shimmers off the broken asphalt for as far as I can see, the gray snake of road disappearing into the far horizon, and I follow it into a future I cannot yet fathom.
Four days. More than a hundred hours I’ve been on the road, and I haven’t passed a single abandoned town. The only signs that anyone’s ever inhabited this land in the entire history of the world are the skeletons of rusted cars I navigate around. But there’s never anything more, just this endless stretch of road and the broad, blank sky. If not for the position of the rising and setting sun, I would think I’d gotten turned around at some point and was simply retracing my steps over and over.
